


It Causes All The Grief

by MayQueen517



Series: The Old Guard Tumblr Prompts [11]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy is around and Quynh is there because I say so, Background Relationships, Booker deserves some kindness after his no good very bad day, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Whump, Cuddle Pile, Gen, Nicky and Booker speak Provençal to each other because I saw a headcanon post on tumblr, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Temporary Character Death, background Joe/Nicky, background andy/quynh, fifty years into his exile, graphic depictions of death by hanging, i mean it is The Old Guard, mission goes bad, tumblr prompt that got out of control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:36:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayQueen517/pseuds/MayQueen517
Summary: Booker has a bad mission and the team shows up to take care of him.---Booker has no way of knowing how long it's been since he had the chair kicked from under him. He registers the tones, the soft nicknames and when he opens his eyes, his team is there.He has dreamed them into being.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & team
Series: The Old Guard Tumblr Prompts [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944751
Comments: 20
Kudos: 185





	It Causes All The Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I got a tumblr prompt that wanted some Booker Whump dealing with the possibility of Booker being hung while on a mission and then taken care of by his team. 
> 
> In my head canon, this is 50 years into Booker's exile and Quynh and Nile frequently chat with Booker and this point is less about his exile and more about Booker and the team starting to relearn how to be around each other again. 
> 
> The head canon about Nicky and Booker speaking Provençal comes from [this tumblr post by toli-a](https://toli-a.tumblr.com/post/626541079327653888/so-i-saw-this-post-about-bookers-native-language)!

Booker remembers his first death with picture perfect clarity. Like other executions, it is true that there is a certain talent to it. Hanging is a hard way to go if the drop isn’t timed just right - instead of breaking the neck, the person slowly suffocates. His first death had been slow; agonizing as his lips and eyes bulged, bowels loosening in the freezing cold. His next deaths (he lost count) were equally awful, a rush of slow strangling, not sure what was happening, only that his vision had gone dark.

(”Deserters,” cried their commanding officer, “are unfit for the uniform.” Booker remembers wishing the man would get on with it, saying prayers for his wife and children.)

He doesn’t remember how long he hung, his compatriots were long dead by the time of his first resurrection. Booker doesn’t remember a rush of breath, only the sudden terror of frozen clothing and the sting of exposed flesh as he suffocated over and over again.

Now, three hundred years past fighting for a man long dead, Booker finds himself screaming as he’s pushed off of a chair. The drop feels as though it takes forever, time stretching like taffy he and Nicky had watched being made in some ocean-side candy store once upon a time. Booker thinks if he thinks hard enough, he can taste the sweet molasses flavor; he can see Nicky's delighted face in his memory.

The jerk of his fall stopping is unlucky and he knows this immediately. His neck strains and pulls and Booker fights hard against his rising panic. The rope bites into his neck like a trap in the woods, finally closing around its prey.

He struggles like an animal who has been caught, ready to chew off his own limbs to escape. He struggles to draw in breath, tears pouring down his face as he loses control of himself, humiliation washing over him at the laughter before he's sent swinging again.

Booker wishes his team were there.

Death is easy and hard at the same time, the slow fade as his senses slither away only to come rushing back. He comes back to suffocation again, fresh tears wetting his tacky face.

He tries to breathe, stopped by the slick bite of the rope around his neck, his feet jerking as he tries to find purchase on the discarded chair. The area where he's been left is empty, nobody around to witness his resurrection and he tries to remember what he did, once upon a time, in the Russian winter.

The rope is slick, he thinks dimly, synthetic. He wonders if the people who strung him up were adept at knots like those in the Grande Armée. He swings back and forth, tears streaming and snot bubbling from his nose. His eyes ache, a sure sign that something has burst as he thinks about how much easier this would be with Joe or Nicky or Andy or Nile.

He dies thinking about his team rushing in to save him.

Coming back to the living is usually a gasp, sucking in oxygen and feeling the synapses in his brain firing.

The thing about hanging is that it can be a slow death. And these deaths are all slow, slower still by the way his body tries to heal the damage to him in vain. He has time to dislocate a thumb, dragging it out of the rope behind his back, the damage healing as he dies again.

He dies and dies and dies, thinking of his team and of his first death. Booker doesn't know if the cold in his limbs is from the repeated deaths by hanging or if he can't stop imagining that Russia is all around him.

Waking is hard, a sluggish crawl to life as his brain screams for oxygen and his freed hand struggles to move as he chokes and jerks. He wonders if he's condemned to be here for eternity like Quynh was beneath the ocean. He wonders if there will be a new immortal who will one day be burdened with dreams of him dying over and over like how he dreamed of Quynh for two hundred years.

Hands close around his calves and he kicks out, adrenaline tapped out but desperation wins out, not wanting to face capture (and wouldn't his team think that was hilarious?). Booker swings his freed hand, striking out at soft flesh and registering the shout of pain, tears streaming from swollen eyes.

If he had the air, he knows that a sob would burst forth.

It isn't until someone pinches him that the voice registers. Booker has no way of knowing how long it's been since he had the chair kicked from under him. He registers the tones, the soft nicknames and when he opens his eyes, his team is there.

He has dreamed them into being.

The team in his dreams cut him down, air rushing to inflate starved lungs. Booker sucks in greedy lungfuls of air, dizzy on it as though he has ridden his first rollercoaster with Andy, all those years ago. Joe is standing there, talking to him, gesturing as Nicky comes jogging in, and Booker knows that he's done a perimeter check.

Lungs inflated and brain working, Booker is ashamed to notice the state of his clothes and the wail that is now boiling over from his throat. He struggles to pull the rope away from him, fragility wracking his body as he sobs.

"Sébastien," Nicky says, crouching in front of him. He hands his rifle off to Nile, her keen eyes tracking the perimeter of the room as Booker heaves air into his abused lungs. He speaks in Provençal, hands out as if Booker is a trapped animal.

With panic rattling his bones, Booker wonders if he is.

"We are here with you. I would like to help you change and then Joe is going to take us back to the safe-house. Can we do that, my friend?" Nicky asks, Provençal ringing through the space as Booker stares at him. Nile looks over, calling out something to Joe and Booker lets out a soft whine, sobs breaking through when Nicky takes his hand.

"Come on, Booker," Nile says, looking over. Her American accent is a change from languages of the past, her eyes dark and kind, "Let's get you home."

He changes in the warehouse, drifting through the motions as he uses the water bottle Nicky passes him to clean himself before he climbs into the clothes. They're soft with many washings and they smell of Joe and Booker has to pause, tears dripping down his chin to land on his shirt at the care his family shows him.

"I. I have a safehouse. You can drop me off there," Booker says, hoarsely, a tremble wracking his body as they stride out to the car. Nicky keeps a hand on his back, Nile guarding them both as Joe looks at him over the car.

"No man left behind," Joe says, a gentle wink sent in Nile's direction as she knocks her elbow into his, fifty years of camaraderie that Booker has missed out.

"There's a first time for everything," Booker says weakly as Nile huffs a sigh.

"Let's agree to disagree, hmm?" Joe asks, sorrow across his face as Nicky urges Booker into the car, sitting beside him. His panic is fading, his body repairing his body, as if the hangings never happened.

It can't heal the mirage in his brain though.

They drive, chatter drifting around him as Joe navigates the turns of the road before them, the swaying making Booker think about swinging from the rope. He closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the seat, holding himself apart as Nicky keeps touching his arm.

Booker stifles the cries that linger in the back of his throat, like blood from a broken nose. His nose is stuffed, tears and grief blocking it as his mouth drops open, sucking in greedy sips of air. His eyes sting as tears slip from beneath closed lids, his hands shaking as he grits his teeth.

"Book!"

His eyes spring open at the call of his name, staring as Andy strides out of the safehouse. He isn't sure when Joe parked the car, he isn't even sure where his mind has been. At the sight of her steel-grey hair and strong gait, Booker lets out the sob he's been stifling.

Climbing out of the car like a newborn foal, Booker lets Andy wrap him in her arms. Andy, who usually holds herself so far apart, holds him close. She holds his head against her chest, his sobs ripping from him, leaving him breathless at the pain as his family urges him inside.

His sobs transform to shuddering breaths, curled as close to Andy as he can get, knowing this will be ending soon. He sobs once, breath hitching as he feels warm hands on his jaw and when Booker looks up, Nile has a warm cloth. She wipes his face gently, cleaning the tracks of tears and mucus from his nose, kindness on every part of her face.

"You with us?" Andy asks as Booker tries to pull away, nodding. He can't speak, voice too raw, emotions too close to the surface as Nile reaches over, combing through his hair lightly.

"You wanna get a shower?" Nile asks, tilting her head. Her braids fade down into shocking blue, free from the bun she must have worn them in during the warehouse rescue. Booker feels an uncommonly warm rush of affection for her as he clears his throat.

"Yeah. Could use one," Booker says as Andy and Nile help him up. Booker hears Joe and Nicky changing, the languages they use drifting back and forth, fading from Booker's understanding as it grows more and more ancient.

The water is as hot as he can stand it, pinking his skin before he heals under the spray. He closes his eyes, letting it wash over his face for longer than he cares to admit. Booker feels unmoored, wanting to stay, knowing he doesn't deserve to stay. This gift, seeing Andy before his exile is over, is likely the only bit of kindness he will get.

He washes slowly, hands moving as if there's a delay on the messages from his brain and when he turns the water off and pulls the curtain back, there's a fresh pile of clothes waiting. Booker stares at them, toweling off, wondering at his own distraction to have let someone come into the bathroom while he showered.

Booker wonders if this distraction will pass or if it will linger, like the knowledge of what it's like to spend five hundred years below the water.

He dries his hair with the towel and dresses quickly; more of Joe's clothes that leave him comforted, as if this is anytime before London 2020. As if he has the right to be back. Booker, staring at himself in the foggy mirror wiped clean, wonders at the urge to punch the reflection. This life he has to lead, this life of exile, is his to lead for another fifty years and he can't blame them if they wouldn't welcome him back.

"Booker."

The voice is soft as he leaves the bathroom, towel hanging over a hook on the door. Before him stands Quynh, dressed in soft, sleek pajamas, eyes bright. She looks good, he thinks. She looks like she belongs and Booker tries to smile for her.

"Hello, Quynh," he says softly. Quynh steps over, touching his arm and then his face, light touches with cool fingers that feel familiar and unfamiliar all at once.

"Andromache said you had a bad mission. Do you want to talk about it?" Quynh asks, leading him back to the main room. Booker watches her hand, remembering the last time they had seen each other. Their first meeting hadn't been the best of meetings, her determination to reach Andy had been overwhelming in the midst of his grief and guilt.

("You don't get to be the only one who hurts, Sébastien," Quynh had said, red coat over her arm as if she's displeased at his lack of a coat rack.

"I'm not the only one who's hurting. I know that. I hurt them and don't deserve them," Booker had said, reaching for his flask only to have had Quynh knock it out of his hand. He remembered Joe saying she was like a pit viper. A pit viper with eerie calm after five hundred years in the water.

"Then perhaps you should act like you intend to heal and not just wallow," she had said, voice firm, as if that was that.

And, perhaps, looking back, it was.)

Their other meetings, sometimes a quick lunch or even a rare phone call had been the brighter spots in his decades away from the team. In this rundown safehouse, he feels at home.

"No. I figured they would want me to leave," Booker says, looking up to see Joe and Nicky standing with Nile. Her hands are wrapped around the biggest mug Booker has ever seen, steam rising from it as her eyes brighten at the sight of him.

It twists his stomach, seeing such joy directed at him.

"They," Joe says mildly, reaching over to hand him his own mug of what appears to be broth. He takes it in surprise, hissing at the hot ceramic against his palms, "want you to have dinner and stay the night."

"I'm exiled," Booker says, surprised as Nile and Nicky share a look. Nicky cups his own chin, a thumb grazing across his top lip and when he speaks, his tone is gentle.

"Oh, we had rather forgotten," Nicky teases, familiar and caring as he reaches out, tugging on Booker's borrowed shirt. Booker follows them, sitting down in the midst of his family.

"You had a shit mission. Least we can do is be here for you," Nile says, sitting on the floor, pressing her back into Booker's legs.

"You fucked up back in London. But you're family and we'll take care of you," Andy says as Booker sips on the broth. He sips at it, steadfastly not thinking about the warmth from his family, from the way that Joe slings an arm around his shoulder.

Tears sting his eyes anyways, his head going to rest on a shoulder that he's cried on more times than he cares to admit. Joe holds him close, Nile playing something on her phone, the accents and music washing over them.

"Are you okay?" Joe asks, finally, leaning back into the couch. Nicky is draped over the back of the couch, arms tucked around Joe and fingers combing through the back of Booker's hair. Their touch is grounding and overwhelming but Booker can't bring himself to pull away the way he would have once done.

"No," Booker says, honestly. He holds the mug of broth closer, smelling chicken and celery and whatever other produce they had bought. He finishes his cup easily, leaning his head into Nicky finger-combing his hair into place.

"What can we do for you?" Nicky asks, Nile turning at the sound to trade Booker's empty mug with her own half-full one. She waves off his protest, patting his cheek affectionately. Booker can't help the smile as she puts the empty mug on the table. He turns, looking back and up at Nicky.

"This," Booker says, clearing his throat, "this is just fine."

One of them, he doesn't know if it's Quynh or Nile, makes a satisfied noise and with his family close, touching him at every available moment, he allows himself a moment of peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I've done my best to tag for everything, but if there's something that I've missed, please let me know. 
> 
> If you notice any little typos, please kindly let me know!
> 
> I'm always excited and happy to chat over on my tumblr and I do take prompts (though it may take me a bit to fill them) Come chat with me at [CactusDragon517](https://cactusdragon517.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Give the [link to this](https://cactusdragon517.tumblr.com/post/631353540859854848/it-causes-all-the-grief-mayqueen517-the-old) a reblog on Tumblr, if you don't mind!


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